Utah prosecutor held in contempt for media comments in Charlie Kirk’s murder case

A Utah judge ruled Friday that a prosecutor in the murder case against Tyler Robinson, the man accused of assassinating conservative activist Charlie Kirk, violated a pretrial publicity order by speaking to the media about the case and will be held in contempt of court.

This Video Is Trending Right Now →

But Judge Tony Graf declined to sanction the Utah County Attorney’s Office by removing the death penalty option in the case, as Robinson’s lawyers had requested.

The allegations stemmed from interviews Deputy Utah County Attorney Christopher Ballard gave to TMZ, USA Today, PolitiFact and Fox News. At a hearing earlier this month, prosecutors said that Ballard was responding to misinformation in the press about the case and that they believed a professional rule allowed them to correct the record.

Judge Graf found that while Ballard “did not engage with the media out of a malicious desire to flout this court’s authority or to intentionally taint the jury pool,” statements sharing his opinion on Robinson’s guilt and the strength of the state’s case went beyond what the instructions allowed. 

“Those additional public statements possessed a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing the proceedings,” Graf said.

The misinformation Ballard was responding to came from a defense filing, which stated that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had been “unable to identify the bullet recovered at autopsy to the rifle allegedly tied to Mr. Robinson.” Prosecutors argued the filing had omitted the ATF’s inconclusive findings — that the bullet had also not been excluded as coming from the rifle. 

Tabloid outlets and conspiracist creators ran with that partial framing. A Daily Mail headline read: “Bullet used to kill Charlie Kirk did NOT match rifle allegedly used by suspect Tyler Robinson, new court filing claims.”

Conspiracy theorists then took it further, citing it as evidence Robinson had been framed.